Michael Gondry is a French filmmaker who has received awards for various areas of his work that includes commercial directing, screenwriting and directing music videos. Among many he is renowned for his individual, creative manner.
Michael Gondry’s career as a filmmaker first started when he made music videos for his band, Oui Oui, in which he was the drummer. The interesting style of his videos for Oui Oui caught the eye of various other artists, especially Björk who commissioned him to direct the video for her track ‘Human Behaviour’ after which he went on to direct videos for another seven of her songs. Gondry made quite a name for himself in the music video industry and has directed videos for some artist on numerous occasions, these artists include many well know bands and artists like Radiohead, The White Stripes, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, The Vines, Stereogram and Beck to name a few.
As well as music videos, Gondry has directed television commercials and lead the way in the development of the “bullet time” technique which is a special effect that refers to a digital effect in which the time and space of the photography appears heavily manipulated i.e. slow motion of time-lapse in which the film is slowed down to such an extreme that you could see a bullet flying through the air or move around a scene at a normal speed showing the events as slowed , this is near impossible to with conventional slow-motion as the camera would have to move very quickly in order to be normal speed when the footage is slowed.
Along with Spike Jonze and David Fincher he lead the way in the wave of music video directors transferring their skills in the music and commercial directing industry into feature films which he first did in 2001. Some of his most recent feature films include ‘Be Kind Rewind’ and ‘The Green Hornet’.
Some successful videos include:
The White Stripes- Hardest Button to Button
